


being free

by kalmgeyama



Series: third-year kagehina [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, KageHina - Freeform, M/M, One Shot, Soft Hinata Shouyou, Soft Kageyama Tobio, Third Year Hinata Shouyou, Third Year Hinata Shouyou and Kageyama Tobio, Third Year Kageyama Tobio, they're dorks and i love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29561124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalmgeyama/pseuds/kalmgeyama
Summary: “Doesn’t it scare you at all?”“What? Graduating?”
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Series: third-year kagehina [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195142
Kudos: 25





	being free

**Author's Note:**

> sooo this turned out longer than I'd thought, but I had so much fun with it!! I tried to avoid spoilers from the manga, so for those of you who haven't read it, don't worry!! I hope you enjoy <3

“Hey, Kageyama?”

Kageyama hummed, a sign to show he was paying attention to him, but he didn’t take his eyes off of the book in his hands. He’d been reading it for a while and he didn’t want to get distracted; the title was ‘A Guide to Volleyball’ and the moment he noticed it in Hinata’s room he had to see if there was any valuable information in it.

“When did you say you got into volleyball again?”

That made his attention shift entirely from the book to Hinata, sitting a little further away from him on the bed, playing with a volleyball in his hands.

“I didn’t,” Kageyama said, and when Hinata only hummed, he added, “You never asked.”

“Well, I’m asking you now.”

A brief silence settled over them as Kageyama tried to search deep inside his brain and find the earliest memory he had that was connected to volleyball. Was it when he learned how to walk or when he learned how to run? He knew it had started the moment his life began, but he couldn’t tell exactly _when_ it was.

“I guess I’ve been playing volleyball…” Eyebrows furrowed, he placed a hand on his chin. “For as long as I can remember.”

“Ah, I knew it!” Hinata’s grin was so bright and wide that Kageyama wondered for the hundredth time since they’d met how he didn’t get tired of smiling all the time. “So your life’s always been all about volleyball then?”

Kageyama didn’t know where he was going with this, but he nodded, turning back to the book. “I guess you could say that,” he said, his mind diving deep into his memories and finding one of the many images of his grandfather, standing a few feet away from him and passing a volleyball to him with a smile.

He felt his lips stretch up in a smile, and if Hinata didn’t notice, or if he did and just chose not to comment on it, Kageyama didn’t know.

“This is just about the basics. It doesn’t say anything useful,” he said, closing the book, eager to change the topic of the conversation.

“Kageyama, you idiot, I already told you that! If you just had a little more faith in me…”

“Shut up!” Kageyama growled. _‘I do have faith in you’_ he thought, but all that came out of his mouth was: “You dumbass, you said you didn’t read all of it.”

“Well, you didn’t either, did you? Because you already know that it’s full of useless information. That’s what I thought too!”

“Don’t compare me with you, idiot!”

“Always so grumpy.”

They stayed there, glaring at each other for a moment, before Kageyama sighed and broke eye contact. Something about looking into Hinata’s eyes lately made his heart speed up and he didn’t like it.

“Whatever, I’m not grumpy _all the time_.”

Hinata laughed. “No, you definitely are.”

“It’s your stupidity that makes me mad, idiot.”

“My stupidity? Look who’s talking! Now you’re just starting to sound like Tsukishima.”

“Don’t compare me to the likes of him!”

“Hey, Kageyama, can I ask you something?”

Kageyama closed his mouth, instantly forgetting what he was going to say. Hinata’s voice had turned serious and oddly quiet, and although Kageyama didn’t really like this sudden change of mood, he forced his own discomfort at the back of his mind. If it was important to Hinata, then he wanted to hear it.

“What is it?”

“Don’t you ever think about…” Hinata moved his hands a little around himself, probably trying to find the right words, and Kageyama waited for him to go on. “Well, about…”

“About?”

“I don’t know… graduation day?”

Out of all the things Kageyama had expected to hear, it wasn’t this. He frowned. “Graduation day?” He repeated, tasting the words on his tongue, but he still didn’t get it. “What about it?”

“Well, I don’t know, don’t you think it’s a bit weird?”

Kageyama tried really hard to understand what Hinata was trying to say, but to no avail. All he could come up with was: “It’s normal to graduate from school.”

“You’re missing the point, Kageyama!”

“What, me?! Idiot, you can’t explain things properly, how am I supposed to understand?!”

“Doesn’t it _scare_ you at all?!”

“What? Graduating?” Kageyama was taken aback. Hinata was wearing an expression Kageyama rarely saw him wear; it was a mixture of frustration and sadness, and Kageyama was once again reminded of how much he hated it when Hinata looked like that. Despite not understanding why he was feeling like this, Kageyama wanted him to just smile the way he usually did and stop thinking about things that made him wear that kind of expression, and so he said, “How can you be scared of graduating? You’ve already graduated from middle school.”

“Yeah, but that was different! Graduating from middle school just means going to another school, it doesn’t mean leaving everything behind!”

“You feel that graduating…” Kageyama started, the dots finally connecting inside his brain. His sister had talked to him about it one day, how she didn’t want to lose touch with her friends or change when she became an adult; she’d told him he probably wouldn’t understand how being scared of growing up feels because he didn’t usually care about things like this. She’d told him he was lucky because of it too, and then she’d laughed about it, but he’d only been confused back then. Was that what she’d meant? “You think graduating means leaving everything behind?”

“I mean, isn’t that what graduating is?” Hinata was wearing that expression again, but this time he’d brought his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them too, as if he was almost embarrassed to be admitting this out loud.

“You could think of it that way, I guess.”

When Hinata looked at him and said, “Wow Kageyama, you’re horrible at comforting people.” Kageyama blushed and felt flustered for reasons he couldn’t understand.  
“Well, what do you want me to say?! I don’t see it that way, so I can’t help you.”

“What do you see it as then?”

Kageyama thought about the way he felt when he graduated from middle school, when he realized that he’d be a part of another team, that he’d have another chance to prove himself and stand on the court for as long as he possibly could. He thought about the hope and fear that came with leaving his middle school teammates behind, and he thought that maybe he understood what Hinata was talking about after all, but then again, it wasn’t like that fear could win over the sheer determination and happiness he felt at the thought of playing volleyball again and getting better at it.

“Being free,” he said, satisfied with himself for finding the perfect word to describe this feeling. “It means being free. When we graduate from high school, we can just do what we like. It means no more studying or doing other things we’re not interested in. It means we’re free to just play volleyball all the time.”

Kageyama thought he might have said too much, but Hinata’s attention was entirely focused on him and he was perfectly still, so he hoped he’d helped him even if only a little bit, even though, as Hinata had said, Kageyama knew he wasn’t the best at comforting people.

“You’re right.”

Knowing Hinata was looking at him was making his heart speed up again and his cheeks warm up, so Kageyama cleared his throat and said, “Of course I’m right.”

“I always thought it was too final, like growing up means you have more freedom but at the same time you can’t act so much like yourself anymore around everyone else. I thought it meant losing touch with everyone… Yachi, Yamaguchi, hell, even Tsukishima, and leaving the first and second years behind…”

Kageyama remembered his sister saying something similar, so he said what his grandfather had once told them, “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

As he watched Hinata’s face light up with a smile, if warmth bloomed in his chest and spread all the way to the tips of his fingers, no one had to know.

“Kageyama, are you smiling?”

“No, I’m not.”

Hinata laughed, shaking his head. “Why would you lie about something like that?”

“Anyway, you know what you want to do after graduating, don’t you?”

Hinata looked surprised. “Keep playing volleyball, of course!”

“That’s right, so stop being scared. We’ll keep playing volleyball together, so even when we graduate, nothing will really change.”

Hinata was looking at him like he’d grown a second head, and for a moment Kageyama thought he might’ve said something wrong, that maybe Hinata didn’t think of Kageyama the way Kageyama thought of him when he thought about volleyball and the future, but Hinata smiled at him.

“You know, Kageyama, I think that must be the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”

“Smarter than everything _you’ve_ ever said for sure, idiot.”

“Always so grumpy!”

“Hey, let me go!”

Hinata had jumped from where he was sitting and was currently on top of him, trying to tickle him. After the day Yamaguchi had done it as payback to Tsukishima, Hinata had been convinced it was the perfect punishment for _‘grumpy people like Kageyama and Tsukishima’._

“This is payback for calling me an idiot all the time!”

“I just helped you, you know!”

“I know.”

Just as Kageyama was starting to laugh a bit, Hinata stopped, and it was only then that Kageyama realized just how close they were.

“Thank you.”

Kageyama’s heart was pounding and he was scared Hinata would notice, so he did the first thing that came to mind. He pushed Hinata off of him and stood up, picking up the volleyball Hinata had been playing with before and walking over to the door.

“If you want to thank me, come practice your receives. I want to work on my serves a bit.”

“That’s what I was going to do anyway!”

Kageyama was ready to step out of the room, when Hinata ran right next to him, grabbed the volleyball from his hands and got out, shouting something along the lines of _‘Loser does the other’s English homework for a week!’_ and Kageyama cursed under his breath.

“Hinata, you idiot! Don’t get a head start!”

“Careful Natsu, grumpy Kageyama coming through!”

Kageyama was really going to murder him someday, he thought, but then Hinata turned around and laughed, probably saying something absolutely ridiculous again, and Kageyama realized that he really didn’t mind this at all.

When Hinata smiled, he found himself smiling back at him, his heart feeling light and warm, and when they started playing volleyball again, Kageyama thought that graduation day wasn’t going to change anything between them after all, and he felt happy, like everything was the way it was supposed to be and that Hinata would keep his promise after all, he’d stand on the court with him, whether it was on his side of the net or the other side, he would be there with him, because he still was as madly in love with volleyball as Kageyama was, and Kageyama felt relieved.

He really wouldn’t change this for the whole world.

**Author's Note:**

> they're probably ooc, but I haven't written many fics with them yet so it was bound to happen lol, thank you for reading sweeties!! I've honestly been obsessed with third-year kagehina lately so more fics are on the way ;) 
> 
> btw, I wrote this while trying to avoid manga spoilers as much as I could and all, so I decided to happily ignore chapter 387 because it brings me pain (if you know, you know) but don't worry, I have other things planned for it :')
> 
> take care!! ₍՞◌′ᵕ‵◌₎♡


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